Now that the election smoke has cleared, I'll mention it here.
I had an informative conversation earlier this afternoon with the bill's sponsor, Rep. Peggy Wallace.
Here's the gist of her proposed new legislation, as reported by Deseret News reporter Brady Snyder, although Rep Wallace feels Brady didn't get it completely right:
The mayor of Salt Lake City and other mayors in Provo, Ogden, Murray and elsewhere could see much of their power stripped this legislative session.Now does this sound like a good idea? I mean we in Ogden are all witnessing the flaws of a "strong Mayoral government" in excess. The "little guy on nine" actually behaves as the Roman Republic's first emperor-dictator. "I won't stick my finger in the wind," he says. The voice of the "people" means nothing to the imperial-Roman Matt Godfrey, in spite of Thomas Jefferson's constant admonitions re the necessity of constant public input.
A state lawmaker is seeking to rein in the duties of "strong mayors" throughout Utah, making them operate to use a corporate analogy more like a chairman of the board rather than a CEO.
Under a bill that Rep. Peggy Wallace, R-West Jordan, plans to run next year, cities of the first and second class that maintain a mayor-council form of government would have to hire a city manager to take over many of the mayor's duties.
Jobs like the hiring and firing of appointed workers, negotiating with unions and arranging the sale and use of real property would all be stripped from the mayor and handed over to the city manager.
It would be the city manager, then, that would function as the city's new CEO.
"With a good city manager there's going to be a lot more oversight on a day-to-day business," Wallace said.
The Mayor, however, wouldn't lose all power.
He or she could still work with the City Council to set policy for the city, develop new programs and concentrate on economic development.
Wallace said the specific duties assigned to the city manager as opposed to those that would fall to the mayor will be spelled out specifically in the bill so there is no confusion.
Besides...Ogden City has become a giant Real Estate Development Company anyway. Perhaps its time to have professionals take the management helm -- Under council control, of course.
I'm not going to comment further on this. Rep Wallace has agreed, however, to provide me copies of her proposed bill, once it's in readable and comprehensible form.
I'll definitely keep Weber County Forum readers "up to speed" on this.
I'd like to do whatever it takes to see Emperor Godfrey stay on for as many terms as he likes -- so long as his powers are restricted to cutting ribbons and presiding over weddings.
Comments?
Don't let the cat get yer tongues.
10 comments:
What a great concept, Have a professional manage the day to day duties of a City. We have definately had a rookie with his hands in the cookie jar for the past six years. and look at what its done. We are in over our heads, the infrastructure is ailing, and our city is in the business of property management, sounds like The midget on the ninth floor never got out of the real estate business. He's a wanna be.
Curmudgeon wrote a really good post on this issue on another thread. Perhaps it could be found and placed over here.
Is'nt John patterson supposed to act something like a City Manager?
Per your request, Dian:
Curmudgeon's most excellent post on this topic.
The decline of Ogden is generally attributed to the end of the railroad in town. That actually is not the whole story. The railroad decline really started back in the late sixties with the rise in air travel. Ogden's real decline didn't start until a decade or two later.
The financial collapse of Ogden started in ernest with the changing of the form of government to the so called "strong" mayor form. We used to have the council manager form and the disapearing railroad was being dealt with in a competent manner under those governments.
What our current form creates is just what we have now. An incompetent politician gets more votes than the next guy and the next thing you know he is playing major league monopoly with tax payer money.
Godfey is a totally inept business man. He has no education or background in high finance or major league business deals. Before he was mayor his only claim to fame was being a slum lord with a couple of motley apartments in Ogden. Yet here he is with his Napolian complex routinely spending tens of millions of tax payer dollars on one goof ball scheme after another. Virtually none of the many "deals" that he has done in the last six years have been successful. NOT ONE. He has run the city into a hundred million dollar hole in the ground.
I am sure that when the state legislature visits this subject they will be using Godfrey and Ogden city as the poster child of why reform is drastically needed.
Just like they did when they outlawed eminent domain.
Lets put the city back in the hands of competent, educated and experienced managers that serve at the pleasure of an independent city council before we are in a hole so deep that we will never be able to climb out of it.
Many have issued complaints about Mayor Godfrey, but few seem to be thinking about the unintended consequences in other cities that this bill will effect. If you don't like the Mayor why did you reelect him. Secondly, if you don't like your form of government, there is already a process to change it -- I would recommend that you look into that before we just change the law without considering the impact on other cities and towns where citizens seem to be happy with the form of government you dislike.
Anonymous has a good point. Cities it seems to me should be free to opt for a city manager/council model, or a mayor/council model, as they choose, and not have it imposed by the legislature.
I haven't seen the bill proposed, but from the description here, I wonder why the bill would keep the mayor at all. What would his or her function be under the new system? Ceremonial and advisory only? Would that be worth it? Seems to me allowing a city to opt for a pure city manager/council model would achieve the same end. And the law already permits that.
This part of Curmudgeon's post I think really significant:
"However,there are drawbacks to this model as well. One of the advantages of a well-constructed mayor/council plan is that each can, if need be, check the other. An out of control mayor can be checked by a council elected separately from him. [Note: that check is what supporters of the new "slate" of council memebers claim is what happened in the recent election.] And an out of control council can, in theory, be checked by a separately elected mayor. But under the city manager/council model, since the council hires [and fires] the manager,there is really no check on the Council's authority between elections."
For me, the whole point of our kind of government is a system where elected officials cannot turn into totaliarian dictators, and Curmudgeon's take on the council/manager form implies that this could happen with it, too. Of course, it might be more difficult to get a Council to run amok than it would be one Mayor, but it can happen.
I think it a shame that there is the thought to legislate this, and mandate that every city of our size must have a council/manager form, because the fact that the thought has arisen shows that there is a problem with abuses. That is sad. Of course I think that the more freedom small localities have for self-government the better, but if things become ensnared in self-serving groups at the expense of the citizens, maybe it is necessary.
I do think, however, that, as Curmudgeon said, the fact that some are dissatisfied with specific Mayors is not a good motive for changing an entire system. Now that our council has changed somewhat, our local government may also, and we may find that our current system is workable.
The thing I like about the change in our Ogden government is that it was voter mandated, not, as Steve says, fiat government. The voters themselves made that change, and in my opinion, the more opportunity there is for that to happen, the better off we are.
I can see where everyone's coming from. Godfrey shows how incompetent mayors can be, and so it seems sensible to change Ogden City's form of government to council/manager.
But, consider some of the negatives of a council/manager form. Let's say that the city council hires a city manager. As it turns out, the city manager is bad news, and really doesn't have the best interests of the city and its citizens in mind. Well, unfortunately the citizens don't have the power to vote the city manager out, and if city councilmen don't have the balls to fire the city manager, you're stuck. A city council can vote to fire a city manager, but it's not an easy thing to do, especially if the city manager has been around for a while. So what's worse, having a mayor that you can have a recall on every four years, or having a city manager that might be securely in your city government for the length of a professional career? Who knows, if Ogden switches to a council/manager form, ten years from now people on this blog might be making the same complaints about the manager that they're making about the mayor now.
A former Centerville councilwoman told me that the power in city government ultimately needs to lie in the city council, because it is the council that gets to vote and make the decisions, and the council is also elected by the people. The problem becomes when a city manager or a mayor has too much sway over a city council.
If you really want a city manager, you might want to come talk to some involved people in Bountiful or Centerville about their experience with their respective city managers before you decide that it's the best thing for Ogden.
The real crux of this idea is not how or how not one can put the brakes on a mayor or manager, but how competent that person is in running the business of the city.
In our modern age in America, and rather we like it or not, cities have become primarily business concerns. Their focus is not on taking care of public safety and infastructure, like they are supposed to, but to compete in a very competitive business invironment.
You take an incompetent business hack like Godfrey and put him in charge of a hundred million dollar business empire and what do you get? Yep, just what he have now in Ogden. A complete fiasco and vast losses to the "stockholders" er I mean tax payers.
Ogden Inc. desperately needs a competent MBA with years of experience in the real business world to handle the very complex business enterprise it has become. We certainly do not need more of the incompetence shown by Godfrey the last six years.
In such an arrangement the board of directors - City Council - could replace a failure like Godfey for non performance when the failure became apparent.
Also a manager would be far less likely to be able to co-opt the council like our supposed "strong" mayor has done.
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